


Find Me in the Drift

by notastranger



Category: Pacific Rim (2013), Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blacksand - Freeform, M/M, QUICKSAND, dumb jaeger pilot husbands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-30
Updated: 2013-08-08
Packaged: 2017-12-21 21:26:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/905124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notastranger/pseuds/notastranger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pitch and Sandy have one of the strongest neural handshakes in the fleet. Is it enough to save Sandy's life?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Remind me to beat the tar out of whoever mislabeled this thing as a Class Two,” Pitch growled in the cockpit of the jaeger known as Blacksand. It was holding its own against the kaiju, but the creature’s monstrous tentacles had dragged it miles from its original coordinates and already disabled one of its whips.

“Just keep it from shore,” Marshall Lunanoff replied over the intercom. “We’re sending Jackrabbit to assist.”

“Wonderful,” Pitch muttered.

He heard his co-pilot’s laughter in his head, bright as the chime of a crystal bell. Sandy flashed him a gap-toothed grin. _Why don’t we make sure they don’t have anything to do once they get here_?

Pitch smiled back wryly. “Good idea. Let’s get this done.”

Both pilots turned in sync, tracking the monster as it righted itself from their most recent blow. “Activating spear,” Pitch announced. A reticulated metallic structure, black as tar, slithered out of the jaeger’s inner arm before straightening, its pointy end curved like a beak.

Sandy controlled the other arm as it defensively wielded its remaining whip. _It’s coming for another attack. Nightmare formation?_

“Nightmare formation,” Pitch agreed. Speaking aloud with Sandy was redundant, but a difficult habit to break. “Get ready.”

The kaiju rose up to its full height and roared. It was built like a tank, but the wriggling tentacles on its back were disturbingly agile.

Pitch deployed the spear and Sandy lashed out with the whip, a seamless motion that left the kaiju off-balance and defenseless as the projectile imbedded itself into its chest.

The kaiju screeched in pain and sank into the ocean. The jaeger rushed forward, glinting golden in the sunlight, but by the time it arrived where the kaiju had fallen, there was no sign of it.

Pitch felt Sandy’s confusion in his head. “Where did it go, Phil?” he asked the control room’s Chief Technical Officer, who was tracking the kaiju’s movements back at base.

“It’s using some sort of cloaking field to scramble our sensors,” Phil replied. “Switch to visual and scan your surroundings.”

“Switching to visual.” Pitch focused on the camera display. “Damn it, where did you go,” he muttered, looking for some sign of the kaiju.

 _Something that big shouldn’t be able to hide so easily_ , Sandy mused.

“Nothing about this kaiju is following the rules,” Pitch replied. “We’ll have to—“

“Behind you!” Phil shouted over the intercom. “Blacksand, the kaiju is emerging directly behind you!”

Pitch and Sandy, both consumed with their search, failed to react in time. The kaiju had somehow removed the barbed spear from its chest and with deadly accuracy threw the weapon at the jaeger.

The projectile ripped into Sandy’s side of the jaeger, where its heart would be if it had one. Blacksand crumpled to its knees and Pitch grunted as the force of the impact slammed into his own body. He swore audibly as his holographic display lit up like a Christmas tree, warning lights flashing everywhere.

And then a wave of fear crashed over his mind, so palpable that he could taste it in the back of his throat.

“Neural handshake compromised,” the eerily calm voice of the A.I. announced.

Pitch looked over at Sandy who was slumped forward, eyes open but unseeing. “Sandy!” he called out. “ _Sandy_! You’re leaving the Drift! Come back!”

It wasn’t a memory that Sandy had lost himself in, but pure emotion – fear and loss and a profound sadness that couldn’t be articulated in words or even images. Pitch felt it all, tried to swim against it, but the tide was too strong and was carrying him away. “ _Sandy_ ,” he nearly sobbed, reaching out with one arm knowing full well the gesture was useless. “ _Don’t leave me_.”

“Blacksand, fall back!” Marshall Lunanoff yelled over the intercom. “Jackrabbit will intercept! Fall back!”

A whisper-soft apology passed through his mind on butterfly wings.

And then nothing.

“Right hemisphere offline,” the A.I. intoned.

Pitch bit back a scream and tried to get the jaeger up on its feet, but with its left side dead weight, it would barely move. He watched on the screen in horror as the kaiju approached, something dreadfully similar to a grin appearing on its bony, alien face. A few tentacles poked tauntingly at the robot’s gaping wound.

“Hang on, mate!” Aster’s voice rang in his ears. “Frostbite and I are almost there!”

The kaiju turned its head as Jackrabbit, the fastest jaeger in the fleet, bounded towards them, resplendent in silver and blue. With a dissatisfied roar, it began to move away.

Blacksand shot out a hand and snatched one of the tentacles, holding it in place.

The monster struggled to free itself, but it was too late. Jackrabbit had already activated the plasma cannon in its chest. The air crackled with electricity as Jackrabbit fired, the kaiju screaming as it took the full brunt of impact and collapsing once more into the water.

It was the last thing Pitch saw on his monitor before everything went black.


	2. Chapter 2

It had been a week since the attack and Sandy was still unconscious. Pitch kept constant vigil, but the physical proximity was cold comfort. Sandy hadn’t stirred once and his normally rosy skin had become as pale as the sheets. He looked less like the sassy, confident jaeger pilot Pitch trusted with his life and more like a sleeping doll, small and helpless in its bed.

Not that Pitch was doing much better. He had barely held it together after regaining consciousness in the hospital wing, his years of military training the only thing that kept him from screaming in rage and despair. He had felt loss before, certainly – his wife’s death was a blow that he almost didn't recover from – but not like this.

Not from the other person’s point of view.

He took Sandy’s hand and shut his eyes. If he ignored the beeping of the machines, he could pretend that his partner was merely resting, not unconscious. He fought back tears and selfishly wished that he had been the one rendered comatose instead.

A cough from the doorway made him look up hurriedly. A young woman with auburn hair was watching him with sympathetic eyes. “Hello, Pitch.”

“Katherine.” Dr. Katherine Kailash, more precisely: fresh out of school, merely a junior counselor in the grand scheme of things, but the only psychologist Pitch was willing to talk to.

He trusted Katherine. She reminded him of his daughter. “I thought you were still in Hong Kong, screening new recruits?”

“They sent me back here, to see you.” She walked over and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. “How are you feeling?”

Pitch bit back a sarcastic reply as he watched Katherine’s professional expression crumble slightly in the wake of Sandy’s washed-out appearance. “Like Hell. Like I’ve lost a limb.”

She nodded understandingly.  “You felt him go.”

“I did.” Pitch swallowed hard, expecting more questions. But Katherine just pulled up a chair and sat next to him in companionable silence.

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed – he found it hard to keep track of time, drowning in all that emptiness– until Katherine cleared her throat again. “Lunanoff wanted me to talk to you about something.”

Pitch smiled tightly. “I figured. And of course he won’t do it himself.”

Katherine raised an eyebrow. “After you flipped out on him when he suggested you spend some time away from Sandy? I don’t blame him.” She turned in her seat to face him fully. “You know we’re down another jaeger. Nightlight sustained critical damage outside Anchorage. Blacksand is almost fully repaired –“

“No,” Pitch interrupted sharply. “I’m not getting back in there.”

“So, what? You’re going to leave Australia unprotected while Jackrabbit relocates?”

“I’m not entering the Drift with anyone else!” Pitch snapped, voice rising dangerously. “He’s not _dead_ , Katherine! He’s still in my mind! I can’t—“

He cut himself off with a choked sob and looked down at his partner’s hand in his. “I can’t do this without him.”

“Pitch,” Katherine said carefully, her voice steady and warm. “I’m not suggesting you replace him. I know you and Sandy were like brothers.”

“Not like brothers,” Pitch muttered absently, rubbing small circles on the back of Sandy’s hand with his thumb.

“What?” Katherine sounded surprised. And annoyed. “When did this happen?”

“About a month ago,” he admitted, a slight flush creeping across his face.

Katherine groaned. “You’re supposed to _tell_ someone about relationship changes after drifting! How can we make sure the two of you work well as a team if we don’t know what’s going on?”

“Forgive me for Sandy and I wanting a little privacy!” Pitch growled, shooting her a defensive glare. “It wasn’t anybody’s damn business!”

He could hear the disapproval in Katherine’s sigh as his gaze fell back to Sandy’s hand. He gripped it tenderly. “I haven’t felt this way since Celeste,” he murmured, referring to his deceased wife. “I didn’t… I didn’t want to ruin things.”

“You love him.”

It wasn’t a question but Pitch answered anyway. “With all my heart.”

Katherine sighed again, not unkindly. “Please understand that I’m not trying to be dismissive of your feelings, Pitch, but we’re at war right now. We need you in your jaeger, so either you train with a new partner, or…”

Pitch looked up at the pregnant pause. The frown on Katherine’s face had been replaced with a shrewd, thoughtful look.

“Or what?” he supplied.

Katherine glanced warily at the open door before leaning in and lowering her voice. “Ombric’s been experimenting with the Pons headsets. He thinks he can get two pilots to drift together, without a jaeger.”

Pitch felt an uncharacteristic surge of hope fill his chest and Katherine quickly held out a hand before he could interrupt. “It hasn’t been tested on anyone yet and it’s supposed to only work for two _conscious_ pilots.”

“But you think it could bring Sandy back.”

“I don’t know. But like you said, he’s inside you – his thoughts, his memories. You could potentially use them to bring him back to consciousness.”

“And if it doesn’t work?”

“I don’t know. But we’ve both heard stories of pilots who chased the rabbit too far. It never ends well.”

It can’t be any worse than this.” A ghost of his usual smirk appeared on his face. “And we _are_ at war, after all.” 

~*~

It didn’t take long for Katherine to retrieve the re-wired Pons sets. “Lunanoff is going to flip if he finds out about this,” she told Pitch as she strapped one of them onto his head. “I’ll probably get fired, and that’s if it works.”

“I won’t tell him if you won’t,” Pitch replied. He tried to get comfortable, but every angle in the padded chair felt awkward. It certainly wasn’t like being in Blacksand’s cockpit.

Katherine re-checked the headset on Sandy and then returned to Pitch’s side. “I told you this already, but it bears repeating,” she said sternly, looking him in the eyes. “Sandy’s unconscious, so whatever you see isn't going to be memories like you’re used to. It could be like a dream, or like nothing at all. Try to stay in the Drift and don’t get lost.”

He thought of his daughter, the way she hugged him every time he left for base, her expression so serious when she told him to always return home safe. “I’ll do my best,” is how he always replied, and he said those words again, meeting Katherine’s gray eyes with his own.

Dr. Kailash nodded, hid the tremor of worry in her hands, and activated the Pons.

And once again, Pitch fell into the Drift.


	3. Chapter 3

Pitch was in San Francisco.

Not San Francisco as it was in the real world, a crumbling wasteland ruined by the first kaiju attack in 2013, but San Francisco as it was, a great sprawling city of wonder and charm. The Golden Gate Bridge gleamed in the distance and the clear blue sky cradled the horizon reverently.

This was Sandy’s childhood home. His family had moved away from the coast mere months before K-Day, so he was spared the intimate horror of losing loved ones in the attack, but Pitch knew it was still a scar on his partner’s psyche.

The tang of sea salt tickled Pitch’s nose and he longed to get lost on the winding streets, to explore this glittering, dream-like city he had never seen except in his partner’s memories, but he hurriedly clamped down on the impulse. He needed to find Sandy.

He walked down a familiar path to the front steps of a townhouse, its cheery, gold-painted door a warm beacon of welcome. He knocked once and the door swung open easily, revealing Sandy on the other side.

Pitch’s chest ached. “You’re here,” he whispered, and Sandy smiled at him and extended his arms for a hug. Pitch fell into the embrace, his hands sliding around his partner’s petite, round frame and burying themselves in his blond hair.

Sandy kissed him, sweet as spun sugar, and pulled him to the ground, their bodies pressed against one another as they had the first time that they kissed, when Pitch finally admitted his feelings, putting words to sensations that had already passed between them in the Drift, swirling tendrils of light and dark tangling together until it didn’t matter where one ended and another began.

He opened his mouth, inviting Sandy’s tongue, relief turning into an aching need. Sandy was patient, almost teasingly so, his hands wandering under Pitch’s t-shirt, tracing the lines of his ribs tenderly.

Pitch moaned against Sandy’s lips, unable to contain the white heat coursing through his veins. The other man’s touch was intoxicating, liberating. It was –

It was a memory.

He jerked back at the realization, even as Sandy’s grip tightened, his fingers digging into Pitch’s flesh. “Don’t leave,” the blond whispered, or maybe just thought it, and tried to kiss him again, but his taste had turned stale, fading like an old photograph as he went through familiar motions, re-enacting their first time together on the floor of Pitch’s quarters.

Pitch struggled harder, despite wanting so very badly not to stop, not to deny himself what could be one last time with his lover, even if it meant chasing the rabbit into oblivion. He pushed Sandy away with shaking arms, tears springing to his eyes as he squeezed them shut, willing the sensations to slow, to stop, to pull himself out of the memory and back into the Drift.

Time passed. Pitch steadied his breathing and dared to look. Sandy was gone.

He stepped out of the townhouse and into a dense fog. It rolled through the city like a blanket and coated everything with a faint, heady mist. Pitch cut through it sharply as he walked towards the Golden Gate Bridge, the only landmark he could see.

Something large and terrible rose out of the bay, and Pitch froze.

It was a kaiju and it wasn’t; it was all of them at once and at the same time something horribly unidentifiable. It roared with a mouth that shouldn’t exist, a slash of nightmare against a black body. Shadowy arms ending in blade-like claws tore through the Golden Gate Bridge, reducing it to scrap.

There wasn’t much Pitch could do about a kaiju, dream or otherwise, while not being in the cockpit of a jaeger. He watched helplessly as the monster slithered its way to shore, crushing buildings and cars beneath its feet as it stormed towards a very specific location.

Sandy’s townhouse.

“No!” Pitch cried, outraged. The beast ignored him and trudged on, barreling itself into the neighborhood that Pitch had just left and leveling everything in sight.

And then in an instant, it was gone, melting away along with the fog.

Pitch ran back up the street he came from, past twisted hunks of concrete and metal, until he spotted a familiar golden door, now lying on the ground in a heap along with the rest of the house.

There was someone crushed under the door.

 _Oh, no_.

Pitch felt his throat tighten as he picked his way through the wreckage as quickly as he could. Was that a flash of blond hair underneath the door? Or—or was it—

_She was staying on base with him because he thought it was safer but it wasn’t. The kaiju prowled through Okinawa as if it was searching for the military base specifically and thank God his daughter was visiting her grandparents in London but his wife, where was his wife? He was too busy fighting, too busy losing and it wasn’t until hours later that he could start searching. The local emergency crew found her first and a police officer had to hold him back hold him down she was so bloody he kept screaming her name and she couldn’t be dead but no one that broken could still be alive –_

The door was heavier than he expected, and he pushed it off the small body beneath it with a great effort. It was Sandy, looking paler and weaker than he had in the hospital bed. He wasn’t bloody, wasn’t broken, but he wasn’t breathing, either.

Pitch sank down to his knees. He reached out and touched Sandy’s hand. It was cold and lifeless, like the rest of him.

“Sandy,” he whimpered, choking on his partner’s name. “Sandy, no. You aren’t dead. Don’t— please, no. No no no God no…”

 _I’m scared_.

He looked down and startled at the dark shadows swirling around his arms. They reminded him of the nightmare kaiju as they slid around Sandy’s prone form, their blackness seeping into his skin.

“What—“ Pitch didn’t know what to think. What were these shadows supposed to be? It was almost like the time he had slipped into a painful memory during a neural handshake initiation and Sandy had to drag him back, to keep him from giving into—

“Fear,” he whispered. The shadows stilled.

“Sandy.” He let go of his partner’s hand and gently pulled him into his arms.  “Sandy, I understand now. I’m so sorry, I put this burden on you and I…”

The shadows stirred restlessly. Pitch breathed through his nose and out through his mouth until they stopped moving again.

“I know what you’re afraid of,” he murmured, cradling the smaller man against him. “And I’ll be honest, if you died… it would be bad. As bad as Celeste, I’m sure.”

He buried his face in Sandy’s hair as he felt hot tears slip down his cheeks. “But I’ll be okay. I won’t—I won’t give up, even if you leave me. I won’t let you down.”

Something dark and heavy in his chest melted, and he felt light. Unbearably light. And so did Sandy, whose body began dissolving into golden streamers that wrapped around Pitch’s body and made the shadows disappear.

It felt so good that Pitch could only laugh and hold out his arms to trail his fingers through the glittering tendrils until his own body dissolved into the light.

~*~

Pitch opened his eyes and immediately winced at the harsh fluorescents above him.

“Welcome back,” he heard Katherine say, her voice filled with giddy relief.

“Did it work?” Pitch asked, even though he already knew the answer.

“Yes,” Katherine laughed. She removed Pitch’s headset and gathered it up with the rest of the equipment. “And I want you both to stop by Ombric’s lab and tell us what happened – _everything_ – but later because Lunanoff still doesn’t know I was here and I don’t want him to find out until I have a written report. Bye.”

She darted out of the hospital room, sparing Pitch a quick smile before shutting the door behind her.

Pitch stood up, wobbled a little in place, then sat down on the edge of Sandy’s bed. The smaller man was sitting up against his pillows, watching Pitch with a soft smile.

“You brought me back,” he whispered, his voice hoarse from lack of use.

Pitch nodded, unsure of what to say now that he needed to speak instead of just think. “Of course. I’ll always find you.”

“Even if you can’t, I’ll always be in the Drift,” Sandy continued quietly.

“I know.” Pitch swallowed and took Sandy’s hands. “I will be, too.”

A moment of silence passed before Sandy’s smile turned cheeky. “And how long are you planning to wait until you kiss me, exactly? I’m not unconscious anymore.”

Pitch blushed and laughed, leaning down to bring his lips to Sandy’s. Familiar, sweet, but always new, they kissed until they ran out of breath, and then merely started up again, the remnants of their neural handshake glittering in their minds like stars.


End file.
